Federal Communications Commission to Be Abolished Essay

We are normally affected or influenced by the media at any given time and place. When we are at home, we watch news on television and get information from the internet. In our cars we like turning up speakers while driving to hear the billboards music or hot breaking news. The American time use survey 2009, showed that “watching TV was a leisure activity that occupied most time (2.8 hours per day) accounting for about half of the leisure time on average, for those aged 15 years and over”(Bureau of labor statistics). It is true that, TV and radio are the main sources of our daily information. As the mass media have huge invisible powers that build, affects and changes people’s sense of worth. Therefore this paper agrees to the fact that there should be a commission to regulate the media so that the information provided is true and accurate.

Many countries have different commissions to regulate the information that is given out by the media. These commissions work towards the prevention of faulty information broadcast provided by the media. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission has the authority over what the media can say on air and it has the right to control who can use the airwaves. In this way, the media has restrictions about what they can say. In the article “Why We Need to Abolish the FCC”, Robert Garmong thought the FCC hurts Americans’ right of free speech and it should be abolished. Because the First Amendment declares that “Congress shall pass no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or that of the press”. I can’t go along with him because instead of hurting our rights on the whole, the FCC protects us. We have two main questions in this context. The first one is that, does the existence of FCC hurt people’s freedom of speech and secondly what actions done by FCC are right or which ones are wrong.

Before discussing the first question, we need to define what “free speech” is. The definition of free speech is quite critical. There are many argumentations on the topic. One of them is, “is hate speech free speech?” In my opinion, free speech means we can say anything we want to say, but what we say should not bring negative impacts to others and the society as a whole. For example, “Racial insults are particularly undeserving of First Amendment Protection because the perpetuator’s intention is not to discover truth or initiate dialogue but to injure the victim” (Lawrence 375). Thus hate speech can’t be a part of free speech. The US does have certain laws limiting people’s rights of free speech. The Supreme Court for instance, has the right of final say on free speech; it is clear that “obscenity, fighting words, defamation, child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats and solicitations to commit crimes,” are some of the types of hate speeches.

These nine kinds of speeches are not protected by the first amendment. Therefore it is reasonable for the FCC to ban these kinds of information relay, and this action doesn’t go against the first amendment. Again we can’t say that this hurts our rights to free speech. The author Robert Garmong once argued that FCC will restrict the content of information provided by the media. He said “the very existence of FCC is a flagrant violation of the right to free speech.”(587) I strongly disagree with him on this one. The FCC is supposed to safeguard the public from the wrong information; however it is not supposed to control the media. Its mandate is to provide a service to the public but not to hurt us. Therefore, as Robert said in his article “free speech means the absolute right to express one’s views, so long as one does not violate the rights of others”. Consequently, if the FCC could be non-existent, the information is given out by the media maybe untrue or can be harmful to some people. We can imagine a situation where the television contains a lot of pornographic information and children are watching, or some variety shows spreading extremely aggressive ideas for high audience rating while no one controls them. This would cause a lot of problems and finally violate the people’s right. Therefore, FCC should be considered as the police of the media world.

It is necessary to have a commission like the FCC to control what should be broadcast, but the main concern will however be, how much control the FCC should have over the media. As much we would not like to receive offensive and indecent materials from the media, we also would not like the media to become the government’s voice tube. This shows that there is need for some proper limits as far as this issue is concerned.

As a consequence, we need to think about what is not suitable to broadcast over the airwaves and how the FCC can control the media. Out of question, the nine kinds of speech I mentioned earlier like obscenity, fighting words, blackmail these words should not be broadcast over the airwaves. Then how about the sensitive subjects like politics, economics, war and international relationship? We can say that US is the most democratic country. For example, the ex-president George W Bush was always ridiculed in television programs, one of these was NBC’s “late show” by Jay Leno, of course he is not the only one who scoffed at Bush, other famous talk-show hosts like David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, tried to attract views by making the “Bush jock”. These jokes about Bush did not only try to play to the gallery. Some of these were about his foreign policy, especially the trade with Iraq; and some were about his reactions towards the Hurricane Katrina. Moreover, Bush is not the only leader who is always being ridiculed, Clinton, Gore, Cheney, and all previous governments leaders were taunted by various media agents from time to time. The talk show is a typical American TV program, from the measure of it to see the whole media system; we can’t say the FCC brings too much pressure on it. In many other countries, it is impossible to see these kinds of words and jokes because they are all banned by the governing law.

Furthermore, the FCC can regulate the media while the government also has corresponding mechanisms to adjust FCC’s policy (the US court). Robert Garmong mentioned in his article that “so far, only ‘indecency’ has been targeted by the FCC’s crackdown”. Is FCC’s crackdown policy fair or too over? “A United States appeals court tossed out the indecency policy of the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, calling it a violation of the First Amendment” (The NY Times). From this case, it is clear that the FCC cannot do just as they please. The US courts have supervisory control over its policy to the media. Conversely, we can’t abolish the FCC because some of its policies are too over. And at the same time, I think the FCC needs to increase its transparency to the public, and let the public know what their standard towards the control of the media is.

In synopsis, there should be a commission that controls the material the media gives to the public, while the public makes their choices. We need to think about what is needed to get a balance between regulation and freedom. Therefore, as shown in this paper I can’t think of a better method than letting FCC strike this balance.